CU LT U RE & T AR
The Light Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe uses her muse to inform and inspire by laurence bass
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n a universe of mesmerizing polychromatic hues, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe captures the world in two colors—black and white. Her photography is comprised of images textured by muted tones that summon the observer to see themselves within the piece. From a wedding day pictorial to the lowering of a casket, her work limns the spectrum of life. Moutoussamy-Ashe’s portfolio expands over four decades and continues to influence new generations of photographers. For the multitude she inspires, her muse is usually overlooked. “I love light. It fills me and I respond to it,” Moutoussamy-Ashe says while sitting next to the giant window in her Upper East Side studio. “One of the things I regret about this period of time in my life—when I’m so busy—is that the light is there, but I’m always going some place.” Timing is everything. Her rigorous schedule of lectures and exhibition openings makes spontaneous, “photography only” days elusive. “It’s very important to be present, to be here and now. That is when you really experience light,” she says. Ever the apt pupil, Moutoussamy-Ashe is relearning how to capture that ‘light’. A recent convert to digital photography, she sees the benefits of the new medium. The time it once took to develop film shot with her Hasselblad is now cut in half by the instantaneous results of her pixilated Leica. Her studio also mirrors that change. The topof-the-line Mac sits adjacent to her quaint darkroom. Although the new methods are less time consuming, she remains dedicated to the totality of the process. “I could do all night sessions in the darkroom,” she says. “Once you’re in there, you’re in there. You get into a groove. And I make it a point to carve out the time to do just black and white photography.” Witnessing Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe interact with a newly-schooled photographer is a learning experience for all involved. Her devotion to organic photography is visible in her living room. “Oh and look at this one,” she says pointing at a photograph by Cartier-Bresson. Working her way along the wall—through Stewart, Kertész and on to Lyon—she breaks down the techniques of each visionary. She never preaches, but merely imparts the salience of 34 June 2009
knowing the fundamentals. Technology is no substitute for talent. The daughter of an interior designer and architect, this Chicago native knows form. Her artistry first took shape while she attended New York’s prestigious Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. “Being in an art school, everyone wanted to go to Europe to study art history. But I decided to go to Africa,” says Moutoussamy-Ashe. Her pilgrimage to Ghana’s Cape Coast opened her eyes to the genesis of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. “Seeing the fishing communities scattered on the coast really stayed with me,” she recounts. “Then I wondered what happened to the Africans once they arrived to the coast of America.” Her curiosity was further provoked by her friend, Vertamae Grosvenor. Grosvenor, poet and author of Vibration Cooking or the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl, suggested that Moutoussamy-Ashe visit South Carolina’s Sea Islands. The visit not only answered her question, but sparked the inspiration for one of MoutoussamyAshe’s most ambitious projects. Daufuskie Island became the subject. “Some people see [Daufuskie Island] as something nice and cute,” says Dr. Emory Shaw Campbell, native of nearby Hilton Head Island and authority on Gullah culture. “The people who live there struggle to get on and off of the Island because of its isolation. So they see it through a different lens.” A lens rarely explored by the world outside of Daufuskie. The Island’s roots extend back to Africa. Descendants of those taken in bondage from Gambia, Senegal and Guinea, they kept the traditions intact between generations. The Island was purchased from plantation owners by freed slaves creating one of the first black antebellum communities in America. With limited access to the other Sea Islands and mainland South Carolina, the isolation allowed Gullah folkways and oral tradition to become the norm. Central to this process of cultural retention is the Gullah language. It is a mixture of Caribbean dialects and the Krio language from West Africa. While reaffirming to the inhabitants of the Island, the language creates a barrier for many outsiders. Moutoussamy-Ashe arrived to Daufuskie in 1977 with Dr. Emory Shaw Campbell as her liaison. However, residents were tentative in offering the thegreenmagazine.com
photographer a warm reception. “The people are so close knit that if it wasn’t for Emory; I don’t think they would’ve opened up to me the way they did,” she recalls. “They would speak the Gullah language to him, but would never speak it around me. There were even times when I couldn’t pick up my camera because I knew it was an invasion of their privacy.” Moutoussamy-Ashe found solace in the home of Suzie Smith, a native Daufuskian, and soon her immersion in the community began. Over the next two years, her sabbaticals to the Island proved to be invaluable. She was befriended by most, but the question still arose: “Why are you taking pictures of us?” Hurricane David erased all doubt. The hurricane leveled one of the Island’s oldest prayer houses. Moutoussamy-Ashe captured the edifice before it was reduced to rubble. She showed the picture to the community and the answer became clear—to preserve the Island’s history. Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe’s Daufuskie Island was a character study of the remote community. Originally published in 1982, this ground-breaking photo essay was a compilation of photos taken over five years. “I think what Jeannie did was rather foresighted,” Dr. Emory Shaw Campbell says about the book. “You go there now and that entire landscape has changed. My memory is one thing, but seeing and having it for prosperity is so great. I wish someone would’ve done the same for Hilton Head.” Like many of the Sea Islands, Daufuskie has become terra firma for the real-estate minded opportunist. The acquisition of land has forced many of the Island’s original residents to move elsewhere. With the change, sumptuous villas now line the beach and acres of lavish fairways dominate the inland. For Moutoussamy-Ashe, each image is indelible. Her deep cache of negatives and contact sheets allowed her to retrace the artistic path she travelled decades prior. “What was jumping out at me from these contact sheets that I hadn’t seen then—when I thought I was getting these great shots—is that I really didn’t know what I was seeing,” she says, while her index fingers trace a line of images atop a wooden table. “When I was 25-years-old and started photographing these people, I was not a mother. But I photographed the children, who are now in their thirties,
“One of the things I regret about this period of time in my life –when I’m so busy– is that the light is there, but I’m always going some place.” and I photographed their family lifestyle. Then I realized how much I had changed.” The journey down this road eventually led her to create the framework of Daufuskie Island: 25th Anniversary Edition. The special edition is teeming with 110 photographs, many unreleased, which offer a pristine view of the Island and its people. “I wanted to be true to the project,” she maintains. “I wanted both the people who live [on Daufuskie] now and those who left the Island to see how it was.” Her due diligence was rewarded. In 2007, she received Essence’s Literary Award in the area of Photography for the book. While the historical significance of her in depth study of the Island continues to grow, her philosophy on preservation starts at home. “Every family needs a documentarian,” she says
while sitting in front of the 25-foot bookcase she calls ‘Arthur’s Mind’. The case, bearing titles ranging from Paul Roberson Speaks to If Beale Street Could Talk, belonged to her late husband and tennis legend, Arthur Ashe. The notes of this true American intellect are etched in the margins of these texts. Some are full sentences while others are cryptic fragments. “I can only image what this means,” she laughingly says while trying to understand one of his inscriptions. Moutoussamy-Ashe paints a picture of the often tight-lipped Grand Slam Champion that many spectators never witnessed from the grandstand. “When he became a father, he just went crazy over her,” she says about his reaction to the birth of their daughter Camera. “He was doing all the silly things that fathers do.” Camera, meaning “room of light” in
Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe Photos by Ryan Kobane for The Green Magazine
Latin, became the focal point of her next project. Before Arthur Ashe’s death in 1993, due to complications from contracting hiv from a blood transfusion, Moutoussamy-Ashe documented the changing relationship between him and Camera in the book Daddy and Me. The text takes readers through both the good and bad days during his latter years of life. “That’s my family so I held it close to my heart,” she says. “I did not do it initially as a book. It became something very important for parents to use as a vehicle to discuss not just aids, but illness with their children.” From whence the light comes, Moutoussamy-Ashe is ready to embrace it. Daddy and Me, like Daufuskie Island, is another example of her overall commitment to speaking to an audience via the camera’s lens.
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